Starmer ‘seizes control’ of selection processes and marginalises members
Keir Starmer has moved to ‘seize control’ of the process for selecting Labour’s candidates and snatched away all choice from local members except which to pick out of the list of approved drones he and the Labour right present them with.
Of course he has. During the leadership campaign he promised to empower members and give them more control over selections. So of course he is taking it away instead.
In the leadership contest, Starmer published a list of promises of what he would do if elected. Number four was to make selections ‘more democratic’ and end NEC impositions:
Instead, Starmer has presented Labour’s national executive with a list of measures that will give parties no role in selecting which applicants are included on the ‘long list’ from which the shortlist for the selection vote will be created. So local members’ only choice in who represents them will be which approved right-wing drone from the list of approved right-wing drones it gets to be.
Previously, officers elected by local members would play a key role in longlisting. Now it will all be decided by the national party and their regional minions.
The announcement is another gob of phlegm in the face of Labour’s supposedly-sovereign conference of members and unions, which last September voted to give members more power in selections. Starmer decided he can ignore its binding decisions by – yes, seriously – claiming conference is only sovereign for the few days a year it’s actually in session.
In Keir Starmer’s diseased version of the Labour party, ‘more democratic’ means ‘the choice we decide you’re allowed to make’, while ‘ending NEC impositions’ means ‘we’ll impose all the options so you have to pick one we like’. And a campaign ‘promise’ means ‘whatever the hell I decide it means’, whether that’s on democracy, renationalisation, the NHS, inequality or any other stream of gibberish he thinks will gain him what he wants until he doesn’t need it any more.
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